Renewing the Old

In the past decade, I've seen my opportunities to fly fish plummet, and then seemingly resurrect out of the ashes of non-existence. Both moving to the DFW region of Texas and starting a family pretty much suffocated any time I could get on a river. (And I certainly didn't want to find out what I would pull out of the Trinity River in downtown Dallas...other than some form of motorized bike/scooter.) 

But the Lord has led us back to Western North Carolina, and I am starting to get my river feet back. We just experienced the devastation of Hurricane Helene, and most of the rivers near me were wiped out from the flooding. But, my hope is that they will slowly bounce back. In the meantime, I thought I would revive this blog. Maybe just maybe I'll be able to post a picture or two in the near future.

Interestingly, I'm planning a month in Germany, so I'll hopefully get a moment to fish the Saale River. We shall see!

A few hours on the Toccoa

What’s that old saying? “Silence makes the heart grow fonder.” Wait...or is it “distance?” Either way, it’s been a long while since I’ve posted here. I have good excuses: marriage, child, laziness. Take your pick.

And so, my fishing life has begun to atrophy and my waders crack and age due to a lack of use. 

When it comes to posting here, there is also no shortage of complacency. I have fished. Not a lot, but some. I’ve just got more "important: things to concern myself with on the weekends. Did I already mention marriage, child, (oh) and German soccer.

But I’ve decided to break the silence. The cause? A few hours on the Toccoa River, a tailwater that runs through Blueridge, Georgia. I stopped by Blue Ridge Fly Fishing located downtown and they handed me this nice map.

I ended up wading into the river around the TVA Park at Curtis Switch. 

Nice, clear river. Lots of husky 10 inch browns, but one problem: The river is inaccessible. There’s a lot of private land along the banks, which makes fishing the water difficult. I asked around, and nobody has been able to point to a spot where there is a considerable amount of bank to wade up and down.

My few glorious moments on the Toccoa produced several fish, the above picture a great example of these beauties.

Who knows, maybe I'll jump off the highway in the near future and jump into the Toccoa (just making sure the flow out of the dam isn't crazy or I'll be doing more swimming than wading).

Fishing the Bode River (Fluss) in Treseburg

The German fly fishing chat forums are right. The Bode River north of Thale, especially in the Treseburg region is just plain gorgeous.

The underwater vegetation reminded me of the upper stretch of the Saale, and the scenery took me back to my time walking the banks of the Gunpowder. It had the feel of a Pennsylvania trout river, set between rolling hills and a lush surrounding forest.

The fish population is high. The Bode is filled with browns in the 10-inch range. I caught a few in the 11-12 inch-range, but they were the exception. I imagine that there are larger fish in the river, but the locals quickly fish them out. [Rumor has it that the fishing club (Verein) is considering making the river “members only” to protect it from being overfished… I hope they find a better solution that allows visitors to continue to enjoy the fishery and help the local economy.]

 

I opted again to stick with an Adams and had great results. I gifted a few flies to the overhanging trees, but that’s a sacrifice to which I’ve become accustomed.

Treseburg is full of local pensions for those interested in hiking, fishing, or just relaxing. I stayed at Pension Haus Alice Bodenstedt, and the couple running the place did all they could to make us feel at home. The owner called his pension a “work in progress,” and he made us forget any lackings in our rooms with a wonderful breakfast. [Treseburg sits in an area of Germany that formerly belonged to the DDR, so the development and recovery from their earlier economy is slowly progressing for the better.]

The night before my day of fishing I and a friend ate at Hotel Forrelle – the Schnitzel and Rostbrätel were delicious.

Petri Heil, Petri Dank hangs in Hotel Forelle

I bought my fishing permission form from Hotel Bodeblick near the Wildstein/Treseburg bus stop. The price was pretty steep for one day (20 Euros but 40 for 3 days), but the view and peacefulness of being on the river was worth it.

Fishing Tag

Oh, and this was the first time in my German fly-fishing experience that I had to wear a visible tag, identifying me as a “legal fisher.” The river has hiking trails nearby, which makes the Bode reasonably accessible.

Of the fisheries I’ve encountered in Germany, this has been one of my favorites. Were the Bode to
become a catch-and-release river, I can imagine it producing impressive browns.

Bad Lauterberg im Harz and the Oder River

Upper section of the Oder

Lesson #1 when you’re traveling by train to a fishing destination: make sure the train stop is relatively near where you actually intended to fish.

5+ kilometers. I didn’t account for 5+ km. I’d have to trek to get from the “Bad Lauterberg im Harz Barbis” train station to, well, Bad Lauterberg. Now, I can hear some of you saying, “5 km? That’s not much. I walked twice that much every day to school and back.” Well, kudos to you. I just wanted to hop of a train and fish.

So, I hopped off a train, walked a few miles and began to fish. My destination river was the Oder. It flows at a frigid temperature out of a dam below the Oderstausee. Before I could do so, though, I went and bought my permission form for the river at Freie Tankstelle R. Mävers…I also bought a pack of Schlümpfe. Who could resist? From there I dropped off my pack at the nearby Pension. [I stayed at Pension Haus Kempe, but there are places to stay littered throughout the area.] I only had a few hours of fishing on the river, so I jumped into the river just below the foot bridge at Hotel Revita (I hiked across the Kurpark to get there) and fished up to the upper boundary of the river near Hotel Panoramic.

First thing to know about the Oder: It’s cold. No, it’s freezing cold. I’ve been doing all my fishing in Germany with sandals/shorts/pants, and this water tested every ounce of fortitude I had. Cold, freezing cold. And apparently this is the feature of the river that makes Bad Lauterberg’s park not just a park, but a “Kurpark.”

Wading Pool at the upper boundary of the fishing section

Through the years, people have come to wade in the freezing cold water, which is somehow healing? (Yes, I plan to use freezing cold every time I write about the water temp. It was freezing cold.) The signs for the various wading apparatuses warned people to only spend 30 seconds in the water. 30 seconds. I spent a few hours, and I’m expecting that every second over 30 was to my benefit. Every. Second.

The fishing was good. I tied on an Adams dry and used it all day. The river is too small to naturally produce large fish (although I could be wrong), but there’s a healthy number of browns and brooks that call it home. Add to this the fact that the upper section offers about 300 meters of scenic wooded fishing, and it was well worth the trip.

I caught a good number of 10 inchers. Walking the river down through the town, there is a spill-dam, which collects a few trout. They were the largest trout I saw in the river. Nothing over 12 inches. And at this particular dam it appears water gets diverted from the river. The flow thereafter dramatically drops, and walking it a bit convinced me the lower portion wasn’t worth my time.

All in all, it was a great, relaxing afternoon.

A forgotten weekend on the Gulf

Only recently I went back and looked at this blog. It has been neglected, so to speak, and so has my life as a fly fisher. Needless to say, that should change. [In fact, part of my reason for checking up on the blog was the fact that I am currently making plans for fishing trips to the Harz region of Germany!]

Anyways, what was noticeably missing from this blog was a report on my recent trip to the Louisiana Gulf. My fearless brother and captain had me down for a weekend in December, just as my semester had let out and as he prepared to head to the Fl. Keys.

The weekend was a reminder of two things: 1) I have a great brother and 2) I am a terrible caster, especially with larger-weight rods. The amount of redfish to which I failed properly to cast during a three-day period was overwhelming. I should practice. I should.

I did make a few decent casts. And one resulted in this guy, who I believed weighed in around 20lbs.

The Nahe River near Fischbach-Weierbach... one last 2013 German adventure

Excuses, excuses, excuses. I have none for taking so long reporting on my trip to the Nahe River near Idar-Oberstein. I’ll make this brief, both for the sake of my ever-failing memory and my laziness.

Just before my return to the States, I decided to get one more fishing trip in; somewhere close by. That led me to the Nahe River near Idar-Oberstein. From Mainz it wasn't that far, so the train ticket was relatively cheap. It also didn’t hurt that I had saved up enough bonus points from my Bahn Card to earn a free all-day train pass. So, it was off to Idar Oberstein….the city with a church built into the side of a cliff. Cool.

Only problem: Apparently they decided to shut down the section of the Nahe near the city for some sort of fishing contest. At least that was what I was told by the kind-but-hard-to-understand-because-of-their-dialect people who helped me at the local fishing store, Heckmann Angeln [I am not putting the link to their store because it appears there is something virus-oriented attached to it], that I was only allowed to fish a stretch of the river in the Fischbach area, extending about a mile.

Let me take one step back and let you know that I attempted to secure my fishing permission form the Idar Oberstein fishing club online, only to be forced to travel to the store and buy the form. It was expensive, but haven’t we already learned that the German way of tempering the lust for fishing is to price-out the purchaser? To get to the store, I jumped off the train at the Fischbach-Weierbach stop and headed in a southwesterly direction, upriver.

To get to the allotted stretch of water in Fischbach, I actually had to head back to the train station, cross over the tracks, and head down stream along a road next to the tracks named “Im Nachen.” As you walk along the road, which will quickly become a narrow gravel passageway, you’ll pass a football park on the left (sitting between the road and the river). The road will eventually dead-end at the train tracks, but the permission form allows for fishing beginning at the train bridge and ending where the Nahe meets the football (soccer) fields.

It was there at the bridge that I had a massive strike from the largest trout I had seen go after my fly in Germany. It took a black wooly bugger, but after a brief tussle, rolled free of the fly. As I walked up the river I came across a younger guy who had landed a decent-sized pike. By days end, I was able to land a brown. All-in-all it was pretty uneventful.

Though the section had its moments, for the price and the pressure, I wouldn’t recommend it over what might be encountered in Idar Oberstein. Maybe my next visit this coming summer will offer the opportunity to fish that section.

A Little Fun with Sherman's Lagoon

I hope Jim Toomey won't be offended by my small change to his comic.

Vodoo Casting Child

I needed a little distraction from the wintery weather here in Mainz.  This did the trick:



which leads me to Stevie: